Thursday, 13 February 2014

All-New Marvel Now has been a mixed bag thus far with books like Loki: Agent of Asgard hitting, and books like The Punisher not so much. It's because of this that I approached She Hulk #1 with some degree of caution, after all Charles Soule's ridiculously high level of output has got to crash at some point, hasn't it? Apparently not. She-Hulk #1 is a fun debut, reminiscent of Mark Waid's Daredevil and as a result has some suitably fun moments.

Straight from the offset, you can see that the man behind this new series is Charles Soule. The writer shares a day job with She-Hulk, as the pair of them are lawyers and as a result this series suits him down to the ground. You can tell from the well-written dialogue that the man has a level of expertise in his field, as the legal aspect of the character shines through more here than ever before. And if you're the type who isn't interested in legal drama than do not be discouraged, Soule mixes in a nice amount of humour to keep things interesting.
This is helped largely by Javier Pulido's artwork which I was pleasantly surprised with here. The man's simplistic, nostalgic style is truly charming. I still don't believe that this style works with all titles, but here - and combined with Muntsa Vicente's bright colours - it definitely adds something fun to the book. Not to mention Pulido has some interesting panel layouts in this book which really work to not just add to the story, but also absorb the reader into what She-Hulk is experiencing.

However, while this book was entertaining, it wasn't phenomenal all the same. The story was fun, but was in the end just a one-shot tale that sets up the status quo of the series, and gives us an idea of what we can expect going forward. It would have been nice to see some longer-term threads begin being sewn here - if only to squash any fears it will end up being one-shot after one-shot with no real direction as Nathan Edmonson's Black Widow seems to be - however I can understand why Soule would want to spend his debut issue introducing us to his She-Hulk.